Friends, I want you to meet the talented Josh Bonanno. I met Josh via Instagram and then we connected when he came to Nashville recently. I was drawn to his work ethic, quality of work, and understanding of the music industry as a whole.

If you want to learn how to do what you love in the music industry, you need to read this.

Name and Location

I am Josh Bonanno and I’m almost ashamed to admit where I’m from haha. I currently live in the armpit of new jersey. A small town in the southern part thats well known, but only for all the wrong reasons. I lived in brooklyn for school though, so I normally lie and say I live there still.

What do you do?

I produce, record and mix artists and bands. I also put a lot of work in to helping artists with business, marketing, social media and just over all making plans on how to succeed in the music industry. I also work for a local production house and AV install company where I handle a lot of voiceovers, sound for picture and designing of audio systems. Basically a little bit of everything haha.

What are you listening to?

This literally changes minute to minute but currently I’m listen to the new panic at the disco album because a friend of mine said it was a must listen. On cue lately though has been Julien Baker, Pinegrove, Moose Blood, The 1975, a bunch of other similar artists and anything by The Chainsmokers. Those guys are insane right now! My goal for 2017 though is to listen to more music though. I feel like I spend so much time working on music and so little time actually discovering new stuff. I want to fix that.

Where do you want to go with your career?

Well you really wasted no time on asking those deep questions! haha. Honestly I’m not sure. The goal going in to everything was really just “pay the bills doing what it is I love to do”. That is obviously still the daily struggle but I start to question what the next steps and what that will look like to continue doing for the years to come. I look forward to just continuing on in the music industry and seeing where that will take me!

Tips?

Work. Keep working and then work some more. People love to tell you that anything is possible, and it is. The part they leave out is that in order for it to happen you have to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week at it. Im a huge gary vanerchuck fan and thats his main message. Get off of the couch, stop watching netflix everyday and work towards your dream. Artists always come to me and ask why they dont make any money. I ask them realistically how many hours they work on music a week. They very rarely answer anything more than 10-15 hours. There’s the problem. Try going to your boss at your job and tell him you can only work 10 hours this week, but you still want to get paid for 40 hours. See how that works out. I’ve written a ton of blogs on this sort of topic already though, so just go check them out if you want to hear me rant/inspire you some more.

What have you learned the hard way?

I think I’ve been lucky in the fact that I have never had a huge catastrophic experience where i went “well that was a learning experience” other than the obvious protools crash or broken harddrive. On a serious note though, i think a really great lesson I’ve learned along the way is that it’s ok to turn clients away or accept that I'm not the right fit for their vision. The client will respect you a lot more if you just admit that you have a different vision or style of work than them rather than angrily doing what they ask out of spite. Plus, it clears you of putting your name on something you don't believe in.

Work you are proud of?

You might think that would be an easy answer, but the truth is its not. For me, I'm proud of all of my work for one reason or another. I’ve worked for large clients, solo artists, big marketing agencies and small local bands and I still have a hard time picking one thing that I’m really proud of putting my name on. There’s still a really special feeling that I get whenever I’m working with an artist and I can see the moment that the entire project comes together. When I can see the excitement and happiness on the artists face with how the end product is coming out it just makes everything that much better to me. Those are the moments I’m most proud of.